Using Commas with Coordinate Items in a Series

Commas are used to separate three or more items in a series, including the last two items when they are joined by a coordinating conjunction. e.g. Brood-canopied green, orange, purple, and red umbrellas shield produce from the sun. -John McPhee

She loved life, liberty, and the happiness of being pursued. It is at this point of the conjunction, that usage differs. Some writers omit the comma before the final item in the series if the item is preceded by a conjunction. This omission is acceptable if it does not cause any confusion. In informal writing there is a progressive tendency to discard the comma before the conjunction, except for clearness, as the writing grows less formal. In journalistic writing, the comma is regularly omitted. To avoid possible misreadings, however, it is a good idea not to omit this comma. e.g. I would hold my laugh, bite my tongue, grit my teeth and seriously erase even the touch of a smile from my face. -Maya Angelou The comma should not be used before a conjunction within a series of just two items: e.g. The manager was genial but shrewd.

She checked my weekly sales and asked to speak with me.

Exception: You may use a comma to set off a contrasting phrase:

e.g. She liked running her own business, but not working on week-ends.

Sometimes writers will use a series that has no coordinating conjunction between the last two items.

e.g. Now she stops, turns, glowers. -John McPhee

Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rainbow trout in a creek near Colorado Springs. -Joan Didion

Commas are not required if the items in the series are all joined by coordinating conjunctions.

e.g. I'd like to be considered good and honest and reasonably accurate. -Red Smith on sports writing

EXERCISE

Insert commas as necessary to separate items in series in the following sentences.

1. Our fire escapes were densely inhabited by mops short lines of washed socks geranium plants boxes of seltzer bottles and occasional dramatic scenes. -Kate Simon

2. Meteorologists were commissioned to make detailed portraits of New Jersey's coastal temperatures humidity precipitation fogs thunderstorms tornado potentialities and "probable maximum hurricanes." -John McPhee

3. She had no confidence in books written in English paid almost nothing for them and sold them for a small and quick profit. -Ernest Hemingway on Sylvia Beach

4. It used to be understood that no matter how low your estimate of the public intelligence was how greedily you courted success or how much you debased your material in order to popularise it, you nevertheless tried to give the audience something. -Pauline Kael on contemporary movies

Commas are used between coordinate adjectives but are not used between noncoordinate adjectives. In your own sentences with adjective series, you can apply two tests to determine whether the adjectives are coordinate: The adjectives are coordinate and should be separated by commas if you can reorder the adjectives without changing the meaning, or if the word and can be inserted between the adjectives without changing the meaning. e.g. I was a very shy, timid kid. -Red Smith

The Committee room was almost empty except for a few elderly, small-faced ladies sitting in the rear. -Lillian Hellman The smithy stood under the spreading chestnut tree. In the phrase shy, timid kid, you can reorder the adjectives to timid, shy kid without changing the meaning; and you can also join them with and (shy and timid kid). Therefore, you would put a comma between the two adjectives.

A safe practice is to omit the comma with numerals and with the common adjectives of size and age: e.g. The little old lady

A large red-haired girl Four tiny black dogs

Commas can be used to set off adjectives in special ways. Many contemporary writers use adjectives somewhat more freely than the examples shown indicate. They may let adjectives follow the nouns they modify, or they may separate them from the nouns (still within the same sentence). Or, they may place adjectives before the noun but set them off in some way. The result is a particularly modern rhythm. This rhythm is marked by commas. e.g. It was a Texas barbecue, Houston-style. -Tom Wolfe

The few girls who managed it were never quite the same again, a little more defiant, a little more impudent. -Kate Simon I remember the emeralds in shop window, lying casually in trays, all of them oddly pale at the center, somehow watered, cold at the very heart where one expects the fire. -Joan Didion

EXERCISE

Insert commas in the following sentences:

1. He felt cut off from them by age by understanding by sensibility by technology and by his need to measure himself against the mirror of other men's appreciation. -Ralph Ellison

2. The ox was solid black stood five feet high at the shoulder had a five-foot span of horns and must have weighed 1,200 pounds on the hoof. -Richard B. Lee

3. Nothing is more essential to intelligent profitable reading than sensitivity to connotation. -Richard Altick

4. She was wearing a full-skirted low-cut velvet gown.

5. Under the circumstances, only an intelligent discreet and experienced official should be assigned to the case.

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